Russia: Abduction of mother of human rights lawyer Abubakar Yangulbaev

The Observatory has been informed about the abduction of the mother of prominent human rights lawyer Abubakar Yangulbaev working for the NGO Committee Against Torture, a member of the OMCT-SOS Torture Network.

On the evening of January 20, 2022, a group of men in civil clothes, allegedly belonging to the Chechen law enforcement, broke into the home of Abubakar Yangulbaev’s family in the city of Nizhny Novgorod, in the Nizhny Novgorod Oblast. Zarema Musaeva and Sayda Yangulbaev, Mr. Abubakar’s mother and father, respectively, were beaten and hit several times by the police officers, who also used force against other family members, the lawyer and human rights defenders of the Committee against Torture who came to help. During the raid, Abubakar Yangulbaev's colleagues called the police,the Investigative Committee, and Federal Security Service to prevent the abduction, but the police took a long time to respond and arrived only three hours after the abduction. Zarema Musaeva was detained by force and put in a car with registration numbers of the Chechen Republic. Her arrest related to a fraud case in the Republic of Chechnya dating from 2019. The officers did not present an arrest warrant but a document stating Ms. Musaeva had to be interrogated as a witness in the said case. Yet the document failed to explain Ms. Musaeva’s relation to the case and the reason of her arrest. She was transferred to an unknown location Sayda Yangulbaev, Abubakar Yangulbaev's father, was not detained due to his status as a federal judge.

At noon on January 21, 2022, President Vladimir Putin's press secretary, Sergei Peskov, responding to a journalist's question, stated: "we prefer not to believe such reports [about the abduction] without confirmation." In the evening of January 21, 2022 a video of a meeting of Chechen Ombudsperson with Ms. Zarema Musaeva was broadcasted. In the video, Ms. Musaeva stated that no violence was used and that she was provided with medicines. Yet, in the video she looked weak and hardly spoke. On the same day, the head of Chechen Republic, Mr. Ramzan Kadyrov, commenting on the abduction of Ms. Musaeva stated that the whole Yangulbaev family should be either jailed or buried in the ground. At the time of publication of this Urgent Appeal her whereabouts and health situation remained unknown.

The Observatory underlines that Ms. Musaeva’s health is at high risk. During the detention, she lost consciousness. Police officers did not allow her to take the treatment she needs for her diabetes condition nor any warm clothes. Moreover, on the same day of the arrest, Ms. Musaeva had been tested for Covid-19 and was waiting for the results as she was presenting compatible symptoms.

The Observatory strongly condemns the arbitrary detention and enforced disappearance of Zarema Musaeva and regards this as reprisals for his son’s legitimate human rights work. In this regard, the Observatory recalls that in December 2021 Abubakar Yangulbaev was himself detained and released after interrogation as a witness. In December several relatives of the family were kidnapped in Chechnya, two of them remain in detention. In 2017 Abubakar’s brother, Ibragim Yangulbaev was detained and tortured by the Chechen police, and arrested on politically motivated charges. He was released in 2019 and filed a complaint to the European Court of Human Rights in 2020.

The Observatory urges the Russian and Chechen authorities to immediately and unconditionally disclose Ms. Musaeva’s fate and whereabouts, and to grant her immediate access to adequate medical treatment.

Moreover, the Observatory urges the authorities to immediately and unconditionally release Ms. Musaeva and to carry out a swift, thorough, transparent and independent investigation into the circumstances surrounding her enforced disappearance, and to put an immediate end to all forms of harassment, including at the judicial level, against Abubakar Yangulbaev and his family.